Chapter 550 — The Dragon and the Crater

To be honest, Amber was no stranger to the whole adventurer's expedition routine—she wasn't one herself, but the adventurers she'd co-oped (read: bamboozled) over the years could almost have mustered enough manpower to conquer a viscounty. In her mind, whenever you faced an exploration target like a magic forest, an ancient cavern, or a secret dungeon, the standard procedure usually began with assembling a team, preparing supplies, and gathering intelligence—then cautiously entering the target area, scouting along the way, mapping the terrain, disarming traps, and fighting monsters... Nine out of ten adventurers did it that way; the tenth, the stubborn one, usually ended up dead somewhere along the road.

And yet now, Gao Yang had proven with hard fact that the vast majority of that procedure could be compressed into half a basic load of ammunition...

The deafening roar of cannon fire shattered the Black Forest's savage order of a thousand years—a fire of civilization, more savage than savagery itself, burned every plant at the forest's edge to ash, and with them every dangerous monster in range was annihilated: poisonous flora, cunning beasts, greedy predators, and sinister spirit-eaters... all of them sublimated along with Art—sublimated clean away.

Safe, efficient, clean, no lingering hazards: no traps in a crater that had been blasted flat, no monsters in a forest that had been burned to cinders.

Gao Yang stood on the high ground before the Shadow Experiment Ground cavern, surveying with satisfaction the great road the cannon fire had leveled—well, "leveled" was a stretch for a road pocked with craters, but it was far easier to traverse than the Black Forest had been. Beside him stood Amber, jaw hanging open, wearing an expression that plainly said, "Are you messing with me?"

"You actually went and did it..." The half-elf felt as though she'd been shown an entirely new world. "Aren't you afraid of drawing the monsters of the Black Forest down on us..."

"Monsters? They should be dead by now," Gao Yang said indifferently. "I'm not giving blind orders—no one knows the magic-tide contamination zones better than I do. This is a thin-contamination area; the main hazards are the mutated plants, the poisoned water sources, and a few weak, insignificant monsters. Truly powerful tide-beasts don't gather in regions like this—the thin chaotic magic here can't sustain their activity for long."

Just as Gao Yang said, he had given the order only after deliberation, choosing to open a path with cannon fire only once he'd confirmed the environment was suitable—and in this dangerous Black Forest, blasting everything flat was essentially the most appropriate way to clear the way.

A squad of elite steel rangers was quickly assembled, and under Suojilin's personal command, the unit set out alongside Gao Yang and Amber.

Though Gao Song's "firepower reconnaissance" always left one feeling something was off, Amber had to admit that the Black Forest, once plowed over by artillery, at least seemed much safer. She saw countless shattered plant remains strewn among the rubble and craters—plants that not long ago had been lethal poisons ready to kill at any moment—and among the plant debris were the remains of monsters fearsome to look upon, their twisted, mutated flesh still smoking, some of the carcasses even twitching faintly—but now they could never leap up to attack her.

Suojilin held his short bow at the ready, scanning the surroundings as he led the party forward. Though the cannon fire had flattened a large area, and most nearby monsters would likely be cowed by the magic-cannon's power and keep their distance for the time being, many creatures under the magic tide's influence could not be judged by reason—a fearless mutant monster might come charging out of the distant thicket at any moment. In years past, no small number of pioneers had died to such ambushes.

Gao Yang confidently left the watch to Suojilin and the steel rangers, while he devoted most of his own attention to the satellite view in his mind.

The impact crater was very close now.

The "safe corridor" blasted out by artillery had come to an end. Ahead lay a tangled thicket of ancient trees and shrubs; the party had now entered the interior of the Black Forest, at the edge of the area the cannon fire had covered. Here the man-made thunder-fire stopped, and as far as the eye could see there was almost nothing but towering ancient trees and wildly growing tall shrubs. This was not because the "Justice" magic-cannon lacked range—rather, Gao Yang had deliberately ordered Knight Byron's artillerymen to limit the bombardment. He was worried a single volley might destroy some vital clue.

But that didn't matter—they were nearly at the crater's edge.

Gao Yang raised his head and looked into the dark depths of the forest. The daylight was already fading; the sun, never bright to begin with, filtered through the thin magic mist and then through layer upon layer of canopy and branches, arriving below as only a hazy, dim glimmer—but with a superhuman's enhanced sight, he could still make out the distant situation.

"Right in that direction," he said, drawing his Pioneer's longsword and speaking to Suojilin beside him. "Keep moving."

Suojilin nodded, raised a hand, and issued orders to the rangers beside him: "Forward—goggles on, stay alert!"

The high-ranking ranger had already sensed that his old friend must be searching for something. That certainty, that unwavering tone, was nothing like the reaction of someone who had merely "sensed an abnormal magic fluctuation"—it was the reaction of a man who knew exactly what lay ahead. But seven hundred years of rapport kept him from asking; he simply carried out Gao Song's orders at once.

One by one the steel rangers activated their tactical goggles. The outer soldiers raised their shields; the inner soldiers released the safeties on their magic terminals, ready at any moment to counter threats hidden in the dense woods. And at the very front of the column, in the deep forest where tree shadows interlaced and spread, Amber's figure kept vanishing into the air and reappearing elsewhere.

Gao Yang glanced with bemused exasperation at Amber, scouting ahead of the party. No matter the circumstances, this half-elf never stopped complaining while she worked—but once she was in work mode, she had never once delayed the real business. Sometimes he wondered whether the disgrace of the elves' usual slacking was genuine or just an act.

No wonder someone in the government hall had remarked that two things in Cecil were most inscrutable: the dark circles under Steward Hedy's eyes, and Amber's attitude toward work. The head of the Military Intelligence Bureau was the only person in the territory who spent every day announcing she was going to skip work, yet whose attendance record, when tallied up, was full every single month—setting aside her manner, she was a model worker.

But whether or not Amber was actually slacking, one thing Gao Yang was certain of: this seemingly shiftless disgrace of the elves was in fact quite reliable.

Just as these thoughts turned in Gao Yang's mind, Amber's figure suddenly emerged from the air beside him.

The half-elf had clearly discovered something extraordinary. Her eyes wide, she exclaimed in astonishment: "Old Zongzi!! There's a huge pit up ahead!!"

"Is that so? Then it seems we're on the right track," Gao Yang said, raising an eyebrow and waving a hand. "Everyone, double time!"

Amber blinked, then hurried to keep pace with Gao Song. "Wait—did you already know? Why aren't you surprised?"